The Instinct of Hope

Unknown

The Instinct of Hope

Is there another world for this frail dust

To warm with life and be itself again?

Something about me daily speaks there must,

And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?

'Tis nature's prophesy that such will be,

And everything seems struggling to explain

The close sealed volume of its mystery.

Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace

As seeming anxious of eternity,

To meet that calm and find a resting place.

E'en the small violet feels a future power

And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,

And surely man is no inferior flower

To die unworthy of a second spring?

John Clare

 "Why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?" Now that's a good question.
(John Clare! The more of his poems I read, the more I like them.) This line - "everything seems struggling to explain/the close sealed volume of its mystery."  A hidden-in-plain-sight secret? If all of nature dies, or lies dormant, hibernates, but "feels a future power", should we not trust to this also? I like that "surely man is no inferior flower". We have dormant seasons too; times of holding back, of waiting, of saying goodbye, of letting go. And all these are a kind of preparation, a storing up - of strength? of hope? of "future power"? Nature shows us faithfully, year after year, a new season is coming.

October

Rick Stevens

October

The green elm with the one great bough of gold

Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one, --

The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white,

Harebell and scabious and tormentil,

That blackberry and gorse, in dew and sun,

Bow down to; and the wind travels too light

To shake the fallen birch leaves from the fern;

The gossamers wander at their own will.

At heavier steps than birds' the squirrels scold.

The rich scene has grown fresh again and new

As Spring and to the touch is not more cool

Than it is warm to the gaze; and now I might

As happy be as earth is beautiful,

Were I some other or with earth could turn

In alternation of violet and rose,

Harebell and snowdrop, at their season due,

And gorse that has no time not to be gay.

But if this be not happiness, -- who knows?

Some day I shall think this a happy day,

And this mood by the name of melancholy

Shall no more blackened and obscured be.

Edward Thomas

I wonder how long the image of the elm tree waited in Edward's mind until it finally broke out in poetry. How many moments stay with us and we have no idea why? And do these images/moments/scenes silently germinate within us over time?

“Some day I shall think this a happy day,

And this mood by the name of melancholy,

Shall no more blackened and obscured be.”

Those lines impress me. The speaker is melancholy, he doesn’t say why, and I like that too – (how often do we understand exactly why a feeling overtakes us?) but there is also this green elm with one great bough of gold. It’s enough to give him hope that he will feel different one day, better – perhaps even happy.